My Lords and gentlemen, in mentioning Germany in this connection I want to make it perfectly clear that I do so in no spirit of hostility, with no wish to stir up any feeling of resentment or enmity against a great people bent upon working out their own salvation. I have not the slightest sympathy with the Press controversies carried on in both countries, which have done so much to embitter the feeling between what are really two branches of the same race. What I desire to point out to my fellow-countrymen is simply this: Great Britain has attained to the limits of her territorial expansion. She neither requires nor seeks another square mile of dominion. Her object should be to develop the resources of her people commercially, industrially, and socially, and to maintain the traditions of religious and political freedom which have been the main cause of her greatness. At the same time there is Germany, a great homogeneous State, with a population of 66,000,000, which is consciously aiming at becoming a world-Power with "a place in the sun," where its vigorous progeny may develop a German life, actuated by German thought and ideals. This nation has already built up, in an incredibly short space of time, the second Navy in the world, not, moreover, scattered over the seven seas, but concentrated like a clenched mailed fist in the waters of the German Ocean. Who is there with any knowledge of the history of nations, or of the trend of European politics, but must see in these plain facts a danger of collision, no one can say when, but within a limit of time indicated by the convergence of the lines of destiny of the two peoples, and which at any moment may be accelerated by some misunderstanding or some conflict with the friend or ally of either country. To one whose sole desire is to see his country safe and at peace, pursuing the path of her destiny to even greater heights than she has as yet reached, it is simply amazing that anyone can imagine that the conflict of which I have spoken can be permanently averted merely by denying that there is any danger, or by abandoning our preparations for defence as an amiable invitation to Germany to do the same. Germany--indeed the whole world--is well aware of the real feebleness underlying the proud appearance of our naval and military strength. She knows that the efficacy of armaments to-day, even more than a hundred years ago, depends essentially upon their being founded upon the nation itself, and drawing their strength of mind and muscle, of courage and inspiration, from the very heart of the whole nation. Such armaments can be attained by one means only--the training of all the able-bodied men of the State. This alone will give a basis, solid as a rock, to all machinery of war; this alone will enable the nation to bring to bear, in support of the national will, the whole might of the nation's power.